Mobile Technology Guide

Monday, May 15, 2006

Deutsche Telekom net profit up in first quarter
(AFP)

AFP - Deutsche Telekom, the German telecommunications giant, said that group earnings rose in the first three months of the current year, driven primarily by its mobile phone operations, while the fixed telephony business continued to lose ground. Source :Yahoo! Cellphones

Friday, May 05, 2006

Nokia 6270

Well, what do you need? Nokia's new slider features push to talk, Bluetooth, IrDA, and EDGE tech for fast data transfers. It runs on Nokia's newly enhanced Series 40 interface, featuring an active stanbdy screen were shortcuts, recent apps, and a notepad can be easilyaccessed on the standby screen. On the fun side, it's packed with an adequate 2MP cam (for stills and video). and an MP3 player, voice recorder, and FM tuner.

Integrated loudspeakers are located on both sides of the phone for lud, hands-free conversations and bud-free music playing.

while the build quality looks pretty good, the design might turn the form-concious crowd off -- at 23mms, it's a bit too thick for anything less than a really loose coat pocket or pouch. The large keypad is spot-on though, and all the buttons respond with a nice, crisp click. The 2 MP cam is pretty smooth, and features a ledd flash, landscape mode, and video recording.

If you can get over this slider's thickness, the enhanced interface, 2MP cam and build quality makes up for it.

Integrated loudspeakers are located on both sides of the phone for lud, hands-free conversations and bud-free music playing.

while the build quality looks pretty good, the design might turn the form-concious crowd off -- at 23mms, it's a bit too thick for anything less than a really loose coat pocket or pouch. The large keypad is spot-on though, and all the buttons respond with a nice, crisp click. The 2 MP cam is pretty smooth, and features a ledd flash, landscape mode, and video recording.

If you can get over this slider's thickness, the enhanced interface, 2MP cam and build quality makes up for it.

O2XDA Atom

For about a grand, you get a PDA phone running on Microsoft's Widows Mobile 5.0 OS, so you get a multimedia machine with excellent handwriting recognition and configurable hotkeys. Positioned as a sort of successor to O2's XDA Mini, you get a lot of other goodies, such as a 2MP camwith a LED flash and video recording capabilities and a ton of connectivity options with Tri-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE, Bluetooth, Infrared, and Wi-Fi. All packed into a compact black package that's around 6mm shorter thatn the Mini.

Well, given that they stuffed so much tech in such a small package, it looks all good on paper. After using it for a week, there are few things e found out: The 2MP cam;s shots are good enough for a mobile, but the refresh rates can be frustrating with the way the screen chops all over tha place, so forget about trying to shoot anything moving. The mini-SD card slot makes any other regular SD cards you might have on you just aboutas useful as stale bread, and finally, the 2.55 mm jack means that you can't use your regular sized high-end buds to improve audio quality.

With dozens of features and connectivity options, the small Atom packs a pretty powerful punch. The choppy 2MP cam is a downer though.

Nokia 7380

We have here the second in a short line of nokia mobiles designed to scintillate and titillate -- if not to actually operate. Like the art deco 7280 that came before it, the 7380 has no keypad. A simple jog dial presides, in the honestpresumption that you have correctly populateed your contacts database.

Nokia represents a good proportion of the thumb that is smudging the line between technology and fashion but it gets away with phones like this only because the user interface is already so easy to use. You, on the other hand, will get away with the 7380 only if you regularly exfoliate.

Motorola Slvr L7

Silicon-smelling gadgeteers will kneel at the altar of Mot's new slimline candy bar. Jaded tech cynicswill itch the burns on their fingers and point out that the Slvr is a re-boxed Razr and thereforeblessed with two-year old innards.

Your modern M16 operative has no beef with Slvr's lack of megapixel camera and 3G, because he is augmented with a retinal chip and cranial biotech. He just needs a dependable mobile that fits into his spandex jumpsuit's pocket.

Slim, toned and desirable -- the Slvr is a study in product design. And marketing.

Samsung SGH-i300 TBA

What.Cramming a hard drive into a mobile might have been norn of an engineer's dream rather than any pressing need for more storage but the i300 manages it with rather more aplomb than Nokia's vaporware N91. It's manageable, albeit with no 3G support, and 'only' a 1.3 megapixal camera.

Why.Replacing your iPod Mini with the i300 is crippled by the propriety headphone connection, although Bluetooth headphones are an option. In practice you'll fill the 3GB hard drive with all sorts of nonsense. Thankfully, Windows Mobile (2003 Edition) is good keeping track of it all.

Hard drive mobiles aren't going to kick off a revolution but if you're after a Windows Phone with plenty of storage, you're in luck.

Nokia 6233 TBA

The last time we attempted to balnce business and pleasure, we yielded a slight difference of 0.62780 nanograms whice we figure is because we've cut out the said words from paper. Nokia seems to have a more successful and pretier way of balancing these opposite poles, as can be seen with a 6233, a 3G phone for those who alternate between downloading the latest stock market news and the newest games available. This is so as this 110 gram, stainless steel-encased communicator has support for the latest messaging, browsing, music, and video standards, which can be viewed from its 320x240 QVGA display, listened to its digital music player and from a pair of headphones or built-in stereo speakers offering 3D sound, and stored in with its hot swappable microSD memory card support of up to 2 GB. Add it's 2megapixel camera and Bluetooth-support, Nokia oretty much got it balanced.

Sony Ericsson P990i TBA

We know you're impossibly good looking and successful, and we know you didn't get there by chance. You're impeccable taste has led you only to faultless purchase decisions in the past but now you have a quandary: do you opt for tha latest Blackberry on the block or the Sony Ericsson's P910i replacement? Decisions, decicions...

Sony Ericsson M600i

Much as we love Blackberry's sweet mail machines, they don't set the heart racing, do they? Sony Ericsson, however knows how to arrest our attention, finishing the m600i in white and black and crafting it so thinly the Slvr sits up and takes note. Naturally every flavor of push e-mail is supported, and you get Bluetooth and remastered UIQ OS. There's even an ingenious typing system where each key has two edges to press, squeeaing a QWERTY keyboard into a tiny phone. We're suckers for good design, we are.

BenQ-Siemens EF81 TBA

Remember Ericsson? Of course you don't. It's mobile phone designs did little to inspire or excite, even if they mostly worked very well. Then Sony sauntered up, swallowed the mobilearm of the Swedish company in a single mouthful and gave birth to the wunderkind that is Sony Ericsson.Can BenQ do the same for Siemens? What BenQ lacks in Sony-esque kudos it more than makes up for in product design and cold, hard development cash. And if the EF81 is anything to go by, BenQ-Siemens is a name you'll be hearing a lot whole more of. At 15.9mm, the phone's just 2mm thicker than a Moto Razr (from which it's borrowed more than a few design cues) but has a 2 MP camera and 3G connectivity. Those are the same specs as Moto's lovely V3x but minus the slightly disappointing 19.6mm bulk and plastic finish -- this gem's clothed in shiny magnesium instad. We think we're in love.